As exemplified by Robert Paige's high-flying block of a Texas A&M shot in 1976, Houston Baptist has never been shy about taking on bigger schools on the hardwood.

As exemplified by Robert Paige's high-flying block of a Texas A&M shot in 1976, Houston Baptist has never been shy about taking on bigger schools on the hardwood.

Photo: Houston Baptist Basketball

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Gene Iba, nephew of Hall of Fame coach Henry Iba, gave HBU a shot in the arm with a string of winning seasons and its lone NCAA Tournament berth.

Gene Iba, nephew of Hall of Fame coach Henry Iba, gave HBU a shot in the arm with a string of winning seasons and its lone NCAA Tournament berth.

Photo: Houston Baptist Basketball

HBU celebrating 50 years of basketball

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As a 29-year-old in the fall of 1990, Ron Cottrell walked into an empty gym as a first-time head coach of a team that didn't exist.

The Houston Baptist University basketball program was disbanded for the 1989-90 season and nonexistent for the 1990-91 season while making a transition from the NCAA to the NAIA. Cottrell, an assistant at Arkansas, was hired to lead the team.

"Only one player on campus. We were basically starting from scratch. We had no uniforms, no basketball, and we were basically starting over and building it up from nothing," said Cottrell, who is in his 24th season as the Huskies' coach. "With a rich tradition of basketball history from the '60s, '70s and '80s, it was a challenge, but we were able to bring up some really high-quality players from the beginning and started to bring the program up."

Cottrell's team struggled at first, going 7-23 and 14-19 in the 1991-92 and 1992-93 seasons. But from 1997-2007, HBU won nine Red River Athletic Conference championships and made 10 NAIA tournament appearances as a once-dormant program came back to life.

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By the numbers

731-700 Overall record

437-327 Record of current coach Ron Cottrell

1,939 School record for points by Eddie Brown, 1968-72

1,287 School record for rebounds by E.C. Coleman, 1969-73

This season, HBU has celebrated its 50th year of basketball by honoring five players from each of the last six decades, beginning with the 1960s. The 1990s honorees will be announced during Saturday's game against Sam Houston State. The 2000s team will be announced Feb. 28 and this decade's on March 7.

"Even though we are only 54 years old as an institution, almost 55, that history is very important," HBU president Robert Sloan said. "In athletics, it's really been basketball that's been the heart of our college athletics experience."

Former stars such as E.C. Coleman (1970s), Eddie Brown ('70s), Jim Skaggs ('70s) and Anicet Lavodrama (1980s) have been among the players honored.

"I felt honored; they were all 6-8, 6-10, 7-foot, and I'm 5-11," Skaggs said of being named to the all-1970s team with players such as Brown and Coleman. "I kid with them. They needed a short white guy on the team, so they voted me in."

• • •

In 1969, segregation was ending in most of the South, but many schools were slow to adapt. Houston Baptist was not one of them. Coleman said he was almost in shock when then-HBU coach Gerald Myers and assistant coach Lonnie Richards came to his house in Mississippi to talk with him about coming to play basketball.

"I could have got a scholarship to heaven after that, and I still would've gone to HBU," Coleman said.

It was important to Coleman to go to a program where he could play under good coaches who weren't afraid to come into deep Mississippi, where he, his brother Mack Coleman (who later joined the team) and Brown played high school ball.

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Brown and E.C. Coleman are still the two highest-scoring players in HBU history. Getting that big boost of talent helped propel the Huskies to new levels against teams that often didn't look like them.

"Segregation, I was very naïve to that," Skaggs said. "We were very fortunate to get guys like (Brown and E.C. Coleman), because over in Mississippi, where they were from, the Southeastern Conference wasn't going to sign any of these black players.

"Most of the South wasn't, so we were really fortunate to have them. I felt fortunate to play with them."

Despite being a fairly new program, Houston Baptist was able to get dates with big schools early on. The Huskies played an ambitious schedule, facing teams such as Houston and Texas Tech on the road. Victories were hard to come by, but HBU definitely earned the respect of its opponents, E.C. Coleman said.

• • •

Myers coached HBU from 1967-70 before heading to Texas Tech. Richards took over and led the team until 1975. After a two-year stint by Bob McKinley, HBU hired perhaps its most remembered head coach, Gene Iba, in 1977.

Iba's uncle was Hall of Famer Henry Iba, who coached 36 years at Oklahoma A&M/Oklahoma State.

Under Gene Iba, the Huskies ended a streak of eight losing seasons. In five of Iba's last six seasons, HBU had a winning record. The highlight was a 24-7 season in 1983-84 that culminated with the school's lone NCAA Tournament berth.

"That was a really special team with some really special kids on it with unique talent," said Boone Almanza, one of the key contributors on the team that lost to Alcorn State in the preliminary round of the NCAA Tournament. "I hope the next teams will be able to eventually replicate (that team) as they are growing and getting bigger and recruiting better."

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On Sept. 1, 2006, Sloan met with staff and faculty members for listening sessions on his first day as HBU president. The first thing he noticed during discussions about athletics was HBU had not been an NCAA member for nearly 20 years and was down to five active sports programs.

For 11 years, Sloan had served as president and later chancellor at Baylor, where he made improving athletics one of his main pursuits.

"The value of college sports is not only for the athletes and the benefits they get," Sloan said, "but it's for the institution and the visibility that the institution gains."

For Sloan, staying in the NAIA wasn't a viable option to take the university to the next level.

"There is no question," he said. "In American higher education, you need to be in athletics, and as far as I'm concerned, it has to be NCAA, and it has to be Division I."

The same day of his listening sessions, Sloan ran into Cottrell and discussed how to take the basketball program to the next level. His first request of the coach was to figure out how to get back to the NCAA and Division I.

"Dr. Sloan came in and evaluated the university as a whole, and going back to Division I athletics was important for our university to create that exposure from a national perspective," Cottrell said. "Now we kind of started over. It was almost like going back to 1991 again, trying to go back to the Division I level, as far as what we needed to do to take the program to the next step."

The deliberating didn't take long. By February 2007, Cottrell and athletic director Steve Moniaci forged a plan, and HBU reapplied for Division I status. It took 41/2 years, but in August 2011, HBU was given full Division I membership by the NCAA.

• • •

This season, Cottrell's team is 11-10 with a 6-5 record in the Southland Conference. (SLC front-runner Stephen F. Austin won a game in the NCAA Tournament last season.) It's a big improvement for HBU from last season, when the Huskies went 6-25. HBU hasn't had a winning record since 2006-07.

"I'm confident we will win championships," Sloan said. "I am confident we will either win the conference or win the conference tournament and we'll get back to the NCAA. We're in a good conference that has an automatic qualifier, and I have no doubt that our program will develop and be good enough to get there."

Sloan says the progress of HBU basketball extends beyond the success of the team. Plans are in progress for a 5,000-seat arena, and he expects the project to break ground within the next three to four years. Phase I is building retail shops on the 25-30 acres of HBU land near the Southwest Freeway and Fondren. Phase II will be building the new arena.

"Every team progresses at a different rate. There are times where I think we are on the verge of doing that (competing for conference titles)," Cottrell said. "The process is ongoing; it's never going to get to the point where you can take a deep breath and say, 'OK, we're there,' because the league is going to be better as we go along, too.